Sunday, April 27, 2008

Realities of a Wounded Crow - Volume 2

Playing around with things I only half understand is what I have done since I was a little boy. I learned all of the states and capitals when I was about 6 because it was something to do, but I have only seen 8 or 9 of them. I’ve gotten better about it all since I am not taking the time to figure out exactly the number, but then again maybe it is the cloudiness of it that makes it all that much more fun. I don’t know really, but what I do know about is computers. I have no professional training in the least, but that again would take all of the fun out of it now wouldn’t it?

I amaze everyone except the idiot that runs the networks at work with my ability to do whatever the hell I want on them, no matter what he does to try to stop me. The Vice President of the company in charge of my specific area doesn’t like it a bit, but since I use my abilities mostly to humiliate those that get paid more than I do, he has fostered {with encouragement} the belief that I have always had about it all. It’s someone’s job, and at a respectably large salary mind you, to keep people like me from doing whatever the hell I want to with the company network. Moreover, I think that the company mutt should be thanking me for all of the security enhancements that I have forced him into creating. Most of them are totally by accident actually but it takes someone with a 6 year old child’s curiosity to get to the bottom of every hole. The last big exploit went kind of like this …

As told to the Vice President when called into his office, “I logged into No Feather’s account, since Three Feather accidentally sent out his password to everyone, so that I could download a picture of two guys ‘doin it’ and then set it as his desktop wallpaper,” and at that point usually I give him a minute to swallow what I just said before I continue. “Then I can take a picture of him with my camera phone sitting at the computer with gay porn on his screen and save it for later use, after he logs on,” then I look for the sign that he wants me to continue, along with exasperation, “Well after I found the image I wanted on Google, I went to save it to his picture folder, and noticed that through the Internet Explorer ‘Save As’ prompt I could get into every folder on the network, and then sent a message to the Admin about this exploit so that he could fix the problem,” as I always do knowing full well that he blows off any correspondence from the company janitor, and more over probably has me set to go directly to the “spam” folder. “So after a few days I felt that it was my duty as a diligent company employee who wants nothing more than to make sure that the company data was perfectly safe, and I put notes in everyone’s private folders warning them of the issue, so that they could be aware of the issue just in case,” followed by the shaking head it is usually my cue to close the conversation. “You know I didn’t look at any of it because I would have personalized the notes better.”

I seriously think that the fact that the Tech Weenie is related to one of the grouchy people on the Board of Directors saves my job in these instances, because he would have to follow me up the hill and off the property too. Unlike me he happens to care about his job and wouldn’t find getting fired very good encouragement to find a better one. Realistically at this rate he has pretty much proven that he can’t. I have been accidentally finding these vulnerabilities for years there, and have made some sort of catastrophe out of all of them. I think I have written enough stories about the Diabolical Captain ADHD to announce that it is a family trait, but again the “hacker” mentality comes from that 6 year old child’s voice that can’t stop looking, or trying, or doing that which should be beyond us. This is how Computers became a fascination to begin with.

When I was just a little Jeremy computers were big clunky things that my school teacher father couldn’t really afford. Thanks to Commodore they became something that a father who was sick of their son pulling apart the electric blender to see how it worked, and often putting it back together again to try and make it work “faster” could afford to fill their son’s time. Needless to say after I took it apart and couldn’t make it work faster, I had to try to figure out ways to make it work for me the way I wanted it to. Later it just became a question of trying to get it to do the things that other people could do with it, and the “clone creativity” came out of me. 12 years later and all that Commodore had to offer me before they went “belly up” I had an IBM compatible PC which could do a lot of things differently than my last Amiga could. Most of them were far more different, and I must admit that the Amiga was a far better dream appliance than the PC.

My PC {a 386 with a whopping 1 meg of RAM} ran DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0, so like most people at that time I removed Windows because 3.0 was dreadful. Using DOS pretty much meant that you had to make your own things, so I started wanting to make things that {as always} involved other people. With a copy of Wildcat BBS I had found the true gem of the last 15 years of my life, corrupting other people. My computer was far more than just a way for me to do things, it was a way for me to get other people to come along and benefit from my ability to break into the local University server and download massive quantities of porn. After uploading it all to the file servers on my BBS {Bulletin Board Service} hundreds of people throughout the state of New Hampshire could dial in to my computer and download blazing fast {9600 baud} pictures {in monsterous 320 by 240 resolution JPEG format} to their own computers, and life was good.

That Bart Simpson need to be the center of attention {almost always negative} was ingrained in me from birth, and my BBS had gone from being a DOS text based downloading machine to being a total knock off of AOL by the time my first wife ended up with my computers in the divorce. Oh well, life goes on, and as of 10 years ago, I had a Captain ADHD on the way that should have better diverted my attention anyway. He was almost 3 months old before I had inherited my Grandfather’s PC and had started building websites to pass the time while my new wife was out doing God knows who, and I was stuck at home with the baby. I was pretty good at it too, as my sites were making great money during the days of that magnificent Clinton fake economy, where anyone with a web page could get big boon web revenue. Within two years Pets.Com and all of the other fake IPO’s fell apart, and with that all of my fake revenue went away. I clapped my hands together and closed down my sites ahead of the game, and waited for my next wife to leave me with my computers.

I’m happy to announce that my third wife didn’t have to compete with my “hacker” tendencies, as I spent most of that marriage finding other ways to ignore her, and drive her away, but when it was all over I found the computer again. My plans were never so grandiose that I wanted to corrupt others in such the manner that I always had, but then came my back injury which forced me to spend a lot of time out of the real world. I started writing until I had corrupted quite a few people, and then started doing artistic things with less corruption involved. In full circle fashion I had gone back to writing, and when it bored me I worked on my website as a hobby. Real life interferes with these things that I would rather do, but I keep that 6 year old child’s curiosity about anything that I see others doing, with a twist. I still like to tweak things a bit to try and make them go faster, or do more, and that got me in trouble with my ISP of course.

Working in that fashion I decided to try and make my clone of Myspace again. It’s always been a side hobby, but I found a cool pile of scripts to do most of the work, and then add my own brand of “tweaking” to it to try to push the envelope. It also works great because I can develop scripts and tweak others without having a high speed connection. My old hobby of downloading massive quantities of porn for some strange reason always requires very fast bandwidth, and in turn pisses off the powers that be at Comcast. Hobby’s are a good thing, and as long as I never start thinking more of myself than I actually am, then I am all set. If either of you reading this get bored and want to track my progress, you can see the new “project” by going to http://coffee.jeremycrow4life.com ;8o)

Nothing that was printed here was intended to offend anyone, and if it did, screw ya, you begged for it. If you believe that there are some measures that can be taken to change me, then please feel free to pray for me, and while you are at it yourself, because you read this far, and if you hated every minute of it, then you are an idiot, not me, or the other people who like what I have to say! .. Jeremy

I have been bouncing around online for just about 20 years, so I have been there and have done that. It doesn't mean I didn't like it and wouldn't do it again. As most humans, I am a social animal. To be a social animal on the internet it is social media that binds us all together. I prefer Google + and Twitter but have pages on the other ones that I ignore, so you probably should too.

My Blogging

I blog a lot. If you don't like people that blog a lot then I don't know how you got here to begin with. You may want to just move along.

Contrary to popular opinion I hate politics, but have political opinions ..

The easiest way to get under my skin is to apply the "all you talk about is politics" tag. This is a common knee jerk reaction some have when they see something political, and unfortunately I don't hold back sometimes. As a matter of fact, I share more about health, fitness and blogging than politics, which you would know if you weren't busy dismissing me. I actually follow and interact with more people that disagree with me than agree with me politically. The list of "other than politics" seems to be growing everyday and it probably looks a lot like this: